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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

101 Essential Texas Books - Glenn Dromgoole and Carlton Stowers

101 ESSENTIAL TEXAS BOOKS is itself an essential book about
Texas. Written by Glenn Dromgoole, whose newspaper columns I used to read when he worked for
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and my
buddy Carlton Stowers, this volume discusses not just the 101 books of the title
but many others as well that cover Texas from one end to the other—and that's
quite a stretch. Fiction, literature, biographies, politics, oil and cattle,
law and order, sports, food and drink, books for young readers, they're all
here, with the added bonus that Dromgoole and Stowers set out to write only
about books that are currently in print, so if anything here really catches
your interest, you can easily pick up a copy and read it.

On a personal level, the authors covered include a number of friends past and
present such as Elmer Kelton, Bill Crider, Joe Lansdale, Neal Barrett Jr.,
James Donovan, Sandra Brown, and Jeff Guinn. The foreword is by James Ward Lee.

The brief discussions of the books cited (a page or two each) really whetted my
appetite to read some of the ones I'd never heard of, as well as books that
I've known about for years but never gotten around to reading. I'd really like
to start reading more non-fiction, and there's plenty in here to delve into. My
only quibble, and it's a slight one, is that the authors didn't include any
of their own excellent books, but I suppose I can understand that. If you have
any interest at all in Texas literature, 101 ESSENTIAL TEXAS BOOKS is a great
introduction to the subject, while at the same time being a very entertaining
volume in its own right. Highly recommended.